"_Il monte! il monte!_" cried poor Donna Rusidda, in a paroxysm of fright, and fled incontinently, closely followed by Will. But the Prince stopped to secure me my _curio_, quoting, with a gaiety that had a ring of forcedness to me, the Neapolitan proverb, _Heaven has its eye upon us still_, which they use when some circumstance unforeseen prevents the completion of an evil deed. But if he was scared for the second, he recovered himself forthwith, for it was the tradition of his house to fly in the face of fortune and fate and omens, and all that sort of seaman's gospel. And I am sure I liked the prospect a good deal less than he did. For both he and his sister and his uncle were accustomed to consider the approaching extinction of their house--it was almost their religion; but I, although it was part of my profession to be killed, had only signed the contract to die for my country, and expected to die with at least plenty of sea and sky room; and that awful sound began to operate upon my nerves. I must own that the unfortunate catastrophe of the poor Pompejans presented itself in most horrid colours before my mind's eye. I expected an instantaneous eruption of the _volcano_--as they call it--Pompeji overwhelmed a second time and me with it; to be excavated perhaps some thousand years hence, and by an excusable anachronism to be taken for a Roman skeleton, and hung up and handled by every curious Miss in the museum of one of our descendants. But as the Prince was determined to grope until he found me my _specimen_, a loose piece which he could take without the qualms of conscience, I could not as a British officer--though I was but a mid--display any desire for haste before a mere Italian. And this though a terrific rattle on the vaulted roof told me that the new eruption had begun and we were right under the deadly shower of ashes.